23 March 2006

Globaloney

Really, honestly, I don't understand it. I don't understand how serious people can continue to pump the global warming issue. The recent 60 Minutes story about the "brave" scientist who was speaking out, regardless of the cost, regardless of the Administration's attempts to censor him! -- it was just too much. Human caused global warming is a complete non-issue to anyone who has bothered to research it even a little. Finish reading this post and you too can start worrying about other things.

First, the 60 Minutes story. A lot ballyhoo about melting glaciers, followed by the most dire warning:

"We have to, in the next 10 years, ... begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO2 emissions, .... If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don’t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we’re going to, that there’s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it?"(NASA Scientist James Hansen, from www.cbsnews.com)

Oh, another key part of the hoax, mention of the recent "warmest year on record." If you can't tell the trick in that, close your eyes and think about it for a second. The answer is below.*

Now, this is my question for these bozos: What did the precious glaciers look like about 1000 years ago when the Earth was already 1 degree Celsius warmer that it is right now? And, again, what did the glaciers look like 2500 years ago when the Earth was 2 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today? Look at the graph below. What you'll see there is that the recent warming trend does not even rise to the level of noise when compared to the natural, historical variance of the temperatures. My gosh, I could explain this graph to any school child that knows the difference between up and down.

(From the excellent paper on global warming found here. Used with permission.)

There is no reasonable way to explain away this graph. Heck, even if we are causing global warming, then good! Look at the graph! It was getting cold in here, anyway.

Global warming is some sort of hoax. I'm not sure why people want to wreck our modern economy by restricting fossil fuels for no good reason. Can we really all go back to being hunter-gatherers? Subsistence farmers? (Well, no. The limousine liberals pushing this nonsense won't be giving up their cars and jets. Let's not get carried away.) Like I said in the start, I don't understand it. My best theory is that some people just resent American prosperity, and are only too eager to believe that it must be destructive. And, it must be stopped.

Michael Crichton wrote a great book called State of Fear that is highly critical of global warming theories. You know, in case you're the sort that doesn't believe your own eyes. And, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine site (www.oism.org) has a petition signed by over 17,000 scientists saying that "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." You know, in case you're the sort who wants to hear it from someone other than an unknown blogger.

* Records have only been kept for a little over 100 years.

Addenddum

One commenter said that you can't take these temperatures as representative of global temperatures. True to a point. These temperatures must be taken as a proxy for global temperatures. But, as usual, it skirts the issue of what really were the global temperatures in the past. And, as it turns out, these are a good proxy. You can always expect the global warming alarmists to attack those with good data and then -- incredibly -- refer you to computer models and the "precautionary principle".